Jitterbug (23 page)

“I never was brought up on that charge.” His tone was dead dull.

“It don’t signify, boyo. I’m not in the fight now. I got Pendergast out of Kansas City where he’d been dug in like a crab for thirty years and put him in Leavenworth. I nailed that Red Earl Browder and pulled Marty Manton by his ears off the federal bench for graft and threw him behind bars. I’d have got you, too, if Pierce Butler didn’t croak just when he did and leave an opening on the Court. The devil was looking out for you that day.”

“You too. You’d have gone down the shitter trying to get me.”

“Well, we’ll never know now, will we?”

Frankie slid back behind his bluff mask. “Let’s not fight, Your Honor. Who delivered the vote for you in Detroit when you went for governor?”

“That’s because you were afraid I’d run again for mayor if I lost. You knew I couldn’t touch you from Lansing.”

Frankie was impressed. He hadn’t thought the mick bastard was smart enough to figure out his philosophy: If you can’t buy ’em, kill ’em. If you can’t kill ’em, promote ’em. The Orr triple play. In another minute Murphy would be calling to have Justice Butler’s body exhumed. He’d almost have been proud to claim credit for that one; but as Murphy had said, that time the devil was looking out for him. He’d take his support from wherever it came. It was the secret of his survival.
Omerta
, vendetta, the Code of the Underworld—call it what you will—had filled the graveyards and penitentiaries with honorable men, and Frankie was still standing. It was amazing what you could accomplish once you put aside honor.

He changed his tack. “I been following your career. I’m a fan. I read where you’re a champion of individual liberty. That means you’re for the little guy.”

“You were reading about Huey Long, not me. I happen to think the big guy has just as many rights as everyone else.”

“That include protection from a crazy cop?”

“Don’t shit a shitter. I was a Recorder’s Court judge for seven years. I know how things work down here.”

“This is a special case. I got a Racket Squad lieutenant threatening to beat me to death in a hotel room if I don’t bail him out on a case he can’t handle.”

“What’s the case?”

“This Kilroy thing. I don’t know if you heard about it in Washington.”

“The wire services picked it up. If Kilroy’s selling to you, I’m with the lieutenant.”

“That’s just it—I checked all my people. Nobody’s bought a single ration stamp since before this nut started. My decision. They’re too easily traced, not like hard merchandise at all. I’d cooperate if I could, but I got enough on my plate with this phony government prostitution beef. Cops and crooks been busting my balls for twenty years. That maniac Jack Dance threatened to pull the plug on my boy Patsy when he was in an incubator. I can look out for myself. I can’t if all my enterprises are shut down.”

“So put your people on Kilroy. You might win points.”

“They’re on him now. No dice. This bird’s an independent. He don’t even live in the same world, but try telling that to this bug Zagreb.”

“Max Zagreb?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“Only by reputation.” Murphy pushed himself away from the railing. He was wearing a little smile. “My advice? Suspend operations. Put all your people on the street and keep them there until they come up with something. A bone. Anything.”

“I can’t do that. I got overhead.”

“Bullshit. The money’s nothing to what you stand to lose if Zagreb thinks you’re fucking with him. You want overhead? Try six tons of concrete out at Willow Run.”

“Put it that way, I don’t see no difference between Zagreb and Kilroy.”

“Sure there is. Kilroy doesn’t have a license to hunt. Mother of God. You don’t see it, do you?”

“I guess I’m stupid.”

“Not stupid. Not you. Just stuck on yourself. It’s not just the murders. Hell, it’s not the murders at all; if Kilroy takes a life every day for the rest of the year, the body count won’t match five minutes in the Pacific Theater alone. Ration theft is wartime priority. Last month, Roosevelt put an end to the rubber strike in Akron by threatening to try the leaders for treason and hang them. If I’d done that up in Flint when the UAW pitched a full-scale riot in the Chevy plant, the Supreme Court would have had me skinned and stuffed and sent around the country on a flatbed truck as a warning to other governors. But that was 1937. Have you got so self-important you think your government cares if a black marketeer gets himself beaten to death in a hotel room for refusing to cooperate with the authorities in a matter of national security?”

“I got rights like everybody else.”

“Is that why you set up this meeting? To tell me you have rights?’

“You’re the only person in Washington I know anymore. They shuffle in and out of there like an automat.”

Murphy held up a hand. The Secret Service man standing by the Cadillac started that way on the trot. “I don’t believe it. What did you think, I’d come down on Zagreb with all the weight of my high office to protect your pinballs and slot machines? Just what in our past history made you think I’d offer to do that?”

“I saved your life.”

“
What?
”

“When you got in as mayor and started pushing over Joey Machines breweries, he petitioned the Unione Siciliana to hang a tag on you. I was president. I told him you don’t kill politicians, the heat ain’t worth it. He damned and helled me and called me a yellow pimp, but he wasn’t in a position to buck the Unione. Later, when you came back from the Philippines and threw your hat in for governor, he petitioned us again. I said relax, the governor has no authority in Detroit. By then he was raking so much out of the policy racket in Niggertown he thought he was bigger than everybody, the Unione included. He said you was one dead mick whether we said yes or no. That was in October 1935. Remember?”

“That was the month Machine got shot to pieces with two of his men on a restaurant staircase. Tommy-gun job. Pretty messy for post-Repeal. I thought you were cleaning up the operation.”

“You knew Joey. He had to go out the way he lived. Point is you owe me.”

“You should’ve tried to collect then.”

Frankie watched Murphy descending the steps to where the Secret Service man was waiting. The bald spot on the back of the justice’s head had already begun to burn in the sun.

“That’s all you got to say about me and Zagreb?” Frankie called out. “Bend over and grab my ankles?”

“It only hurts for a minute.”

C
ANAL BREATHED ON THE
filmy window and shook out his handkerchief to rub at it. The linen stuck. He wondered how many cartons of cigarettes it took to turn a pane of glass into flypaper.

“I’ll miss this shithole,” he” said. “It’s the first place I felt at home since my old man and old lady moved us out of the boxcar.”

Zagreb said, “We wouldn’t be leaving it if you and Burke didn’t go around telling every punk in the city about the California.”

Burke was sitting on the exposed springs of the bedstead with his hands on his knees. “Frankie already knew all about it. You should of seen him when we mentioned it. He shit his pants.”

“He’ll just have his tailor run up another pair. Anyway too many people know about the place. I’m surprised the press wasn’t camping out in front when we pulled up. I saw a Pathé truck parked outside Hudson’s.”

McReary was leaning back against the door. With his shoulder covering part of the sign that was permanently fixed there, the legend advised guests to
SPIT ON THE FLOOR.
The condition of the narrow cherrywood planks suggested that its point had been taken. “I never heard of anything like it. This asshole must have balls as big as B-17s.” His sister worked at Studebaker.

“How sure are we this asshole is our asshole?” Canal asked.

“We go through this every time.” Zagreb repositioned one of the chairs, then changed his mind and went on pacing. He hadn’t sat anywhere but in the car longer than five minutes since the call came in. “You want one of these fuckers to fuck with, or a fucking platoon? Let me know when you’ve made up your fucking mind. I’ll be in a fucking submarine.”

Canal winked at McReary. “We got to get Zag laid. He’s got fucking on the brain.”

Zagreb kicked over the chair. The clatter made everyone jump. Immediately he held up both palms. “Forget it. I’m sorry. Forget it.”

“We’re all in the same boat,” McReary said.

“Don’t say that, okay? Say anything but that. You sound like that prick Brandon.” The lieutenant plucked a Chesterfield out of his pack. The Ronson wouldn’t fire, and he threw it and the cigarette out the window.

Canal and Burke exchanged glances. Burke cleared his throat and asked if there was anything from the lab.

“Not yet. I gave them the number here. This is the last time we’ll be using the room, and it’s the only place we can talk without some son of a bitch in a blue bag listening in. I’d just as soon sell the story to Hearst myself and cut out the middleman.”

“It isn’t just the uniform boys,” Burke said. “Brandon didn’t make inspector by pretending to be Garbo.”

McReary said, “Carton of cigs says even if we make the collar he’ll grab it.”

“I don’t care who gets the collar. I want this cocksucker in a cage.” Zagreb looked at Burke. “You look too comfortable. Call the lab.”

Burke got up from the bed and went out.

Canal tried to raise the window another few inches. When it wouldn’t budge he put his detecting skills to work and discovered that two nails had been pounded into the frame to prevent second-story men from opening it far enough to climb inside. No air was stirring through the six-inch gap. “Somebody in the store had to have seen something,” he said.

Zagreb said, “The husband’s no help. He had a seizure right in front of the prowl-car cops. They took him away in the same ambulance with the security guard. I don’t think he saw anything anyway. Guard was DOA at Receiving, never recovered consciousness. Some of the employees were going off shift at the time of the attack. I borrowed a couple of uniforms from the First and Ninth to run them down. Both of them are waiting for their call-up. They’ve got nothing to gain from running to Brandon or the press. They’ll be up to their ass in the enemy in eight weeks.”

“Welcome to the club.” Canal surrendered to the heat and peeled off his coat. He looked even bigger in his white shirt, sweat through along the strap of his shoulder rig.

Burke came back after five minutes. The hallway where the telephone was was even hotter than the room and he was sweating like an overworked draft horse.

Two sets of prints on the briefcase,” he reported. “One’s the floorwalker’s; he picked it up. Other set matches a print on the steel scabbard we found inside the case. There’s traces of blood inside the scabbard and the case. They’re testing it for type now.”

“They say they’re sending the prints to Washington?” Zagreb asked.

Burke nodded. Seeing that Canal had stripped down, he took his coat and hung it on the back of a chair. It was the hottest June in a decade.

“Put your coats back on. We’re getting copies of those prints and calling every recruiting center in the city.”

“I thought I’d let them draft me,” Burke said.

“This guy wears a uniform. He isn’t selling the ration stamps he steals; he’s taking them out of circulation, like a good American. Good Americans volunteer for military service.”

Canal shrugged into his wilted coat. “Then why ain’t he killing Japs or Krauts instead of Detroiters?”

“Because Uncle Sam doesn’t put cuckoos in uniform, that’s why.”

McReary, amused, looked glum. “Since when?”

Zagreb ignored him. “This guy was rejected for military service, probably on a psycho, and he didn’t do cartwheels over it. He hit the beaches in his own hometown. But his prints are on record. They print you at the same time they’re sticking their finger up your ass and telling you to piss in a cup. That’s to make sure they don’t induct known criminals.”

“We don’t know none of this for sure,” Canal said: “All we know is some kind of uniform’s missing from the inventory the Jew cleaner kept, and maybe the Polack woman in Hamtramck was buying a magazine subscription. You put those two things together and came up with Willie Gillis with a knife.”

“A bayonet. That scabbard’s standard army issue. Kilroy’s got military on the brain. If you got a better theory we’ll run it out.”

The telephone rang in the hall. McReary, standing closest to the door, went out.

Canal said, “Well, I ain’t got one. But they don’t hang on to them prints. They send them on to Washington, where they go into about a million files.”

“We can narrow that to thousands by sorting out the rejects.”

Burke said, “Maybe hundreds. There can’t be
that
many cuckoos in the metro area.”

Canal snorted.

“Some nuts fool doctors.” Zagreb speared a cigarette between his lips and patted his pockets for his lighter, forgetting. Burke struck a match. “Thanks. We’ll put the psychos on top of the list, but we have to include ulcers and flat feet.”

“Be easier if we had a description,” Canal said.

“A name would be nice, too, and a social security number if he’s a Roosevelt man. Or we could sit around Thirteen Hundred drinking gin rickies and wait for him to turn himself in. Since we don’t have any of those things, let’s use some of those extra rations Uncle Sam lets us have for shoes.”

McReary returned and shut the door. “That was Bertriel on the horn, from the Ninth. He’s with a Cathleen Dooley in Redford; she lives with her mother. Part-time clerk at Hudson’s. He thinks she might have got a look at Kilroy. A good look.”

“Thank Christ.” Canal reached for his coat. “I traded all my shoe rations to my brother-in-law for liquor.”

T
HEY PARKED THE BLACK
Oldsmobile behind a Michigan Ice Company wagon drawn up to the curb. The wagon’s inventory was dripping through the tailgate into a puddle on the asphalt. When they braked, a sharp earthy stench announced to the occupants in front and back that they’d rolled into a pile of fresh horseshit.